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I no longer build software

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Re: I no longer build software

#831

Holy shit, this is me! A couple things to clarify: I posted the original issue as a minor complaint about the docker cli and promptly forgot about it. I never expected it to get any traction or follow-up. At the time I posted it, I was working as a contractor for my former full time employer. I had left full-time work there in early 2017 to attend the full-time program at the (sadly now-defunct) Furniture Institute o…

Sorry for such a direct question. With the pandemic hit your business, do you regret switching the professions?

Re: I no longer build software

#832

Holy shit, this is me! A couple things to clarify: I posted the original issue as a minor complaint about the docker cli and promptly forgot about it. I never expected it to get any traction or follow-up. At the time I posted it, I was working as a contractor for my former full time employer. I had left full-time work there in early 2017 to attend the full-time program at the (sadly now-defunct) Furniture Institute o…

What type of containers do you ship your furniture in?

Re: I no longer build software

#833
post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did basically this for a year, except in my main bedroom (didn't have a spare). You're right to be worried about dust and noise. For the dust I had a pretty powerful airfilter, but I would still have clouds of dust coming out of my pillow/sheets. I would have said that general noise during the day was ok in my case, but that was before everybody worked from home. For chiseling you can actually do a lot without hamm…

Thanks for the thoughts. Were your dust clouds the result of hand tools, or were you using power tools? I’ve mostly used power tools, but my impression is that hand tools might make less of a mess? Hopefully being in a separate room I can isolate things... That’s good to know you can sometimes get by chiseling without a hammer! At the moment I’m interested in making a Danish Modern style chair, likely in walnut or oa…

If you don't want to dedicate the whole room you could try one of the variety of temporary dust barrier systems like this one: https://www.zipwall.com

Re: I no longer build software

#834

Holy shit, this is me! A couple things to clarify: I posted the original issue as a minor complaint about the docker cli and promptly forgot about it. I never expected it to get any traction or follow-up. At the time I posted it, I was working as a contractor for my former full time employer. I had left full-time work there in early 2017 to attend the full-time program at the (sadly now-defunct) Furniture Institute o…

Kudos to you for having the wherewithal to make such a choice for your quality of life. The rest of us should take this opportunity to think how our requests and demands on OSS maintainers are perceived and be more empathetic: if you aren't paying for something you can't demand anything get done, this after all, is a collective effort of hackers working toward some community good. If you or a company directly benefit…

First off, thank you!

Secondly, if I can leave everybody with just one more takeaway (besides supporting your local craft organizations, wherever you may be), it's that the phrase "it takes a village" applies to businesses too.

Besides first and foremost my partner, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to everybody who has taught me; everybody who was a student with me at the Furniture Institute of MA, I've learned something from every one of them; everybody I've worked for, I've learned something from every one of them; anybody who's ever written a blog article I've read; anybody who's ever made a youtube video I've watched; my suppliers, especially the knowledgeable ones who've taken the time to not just sell me something but help me learn what fits my needs; my customers, especially the early ones who have worked with me as hiccups have arisen; countless friends both in the trade and otherwise who have provided moral support, gotten me out of jams, and been all around awesome; and finally my partner, who bears thanking way more than just twice.

I don't consider myself especially brave for having taken this step or having any particular wherewithal. For most of us in woodworking, there's an enormous number of people we have leaned on and learned from to get us where we are. I suspect this is true for most of us in software as well. There's a lot of companies built at least in part on open source projects, existing infrastructure, etc.

To be clear, I've never made a contribution of any significance to an OSS project outside of working a 9-5 salaried job. Your point is spot-on, but I can't rightly claim to have been on the sharp end of maintaining anything open source. Thank you to those who do.

Lastly, this all came about because I've been following the Fusion360 news on HN and looking into alternatives. I downloaded FreeCAD, started reading docs, and found a dead link in their README.md. I filed a bug, submitted a PR, and figured if I ever wanted it to be useful, I'd better sort the email account that github sends to. I cleared out a couple thousand github notifications for projects I no longer work on, and that many more bounce messages from my former employer.

Among the several hundred remaining emails was a slew of notifications about the bug that I filed 3 years ago. I figured I should check in, and the rest is (recent) history.

Re: I no longer build software

#835

I’ve been building software for around 20 years. It’s more enjoyable to me than it has ever been. One of the reasons is I have my own playground repo + site where I put all my experiments and write whatever I want. I can now make more in a day than I could have made in a year 15 years ago. In the past few months, I have: - built a serverless website/ code playground that enables me to host all my experiments and cost…

Can you describe more about your serverless website / code playground? Just curious.

(I'm currently re-discovering the fun of coding by writing video games and hosting them internally to my house on docker containers on a Raspberry Pi.)

Re: I no longer build software

#836
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too would love to do it. It irks me to this day that I was taught nonsense such as latin in school instead of woodwork or metalwork.

Serious question, didn't anyone else' school have shop class? I was a college prep, NHS, cross country, all AP core courses kind of guy, and I took it all four years of high school. Or was there some kind of restriction on taking it at your school? Or maybe your parents didn't let you? Genuinely curious as to why someone with a professed interest would not have taken shop?

Mine did, but in my sophomore year, they were cut due to budget constraints that failed to meet a referendum. Industrial tech, foods, automotive, and welding all got the axe. Music and sports only stuck around because of the boosters. The Cisco and CAD classes stuck around because the local community college sponsored them, which is how I ended up where I am today I guess.

Re: I no longer build software

#837
Reading over the comments there's a lot of "wow, I want to do that" and "wow, I'm so glad I also did that". My story is somewhat different but might also help those who want to do that but, say, need to pay bills to eat.

I left my most recent full-time (45+ hrs/wk) job coding after 9 years in the valley. When I was planning it, I was treating it as a long sabbatical and was going to travel and not do any work. However, along my travels I've found myself stuck in one country or another for various reasons (like global pandemics) and with nothing better to do, logged back online. Except, this time I knew before I started exactly what my goal was: I wanted to make enough money to pay my bills, and not a penny more. Going in with this outlook, I took freelancing gigs with a few companies, and I've now settled into a consistent relationship with a software consulting company.

I agree with many comments in this thread: what I'm doing isn't creative; it's basic operational stuff; "glue" software... But I don't need it to be interesting. I work 15 hours in a week and when I don't feel like working on a particular day--then I don't. I make just over what I spend each month. Since I have so much extra time, when inspiration strikes me, I can go and work on hobby programming projects as a creative outlet (which is why I got into programming in the first place)!

I've spent 15+ years learning these computer programming skills. If the job isn't interesting and I can do what's required in my sleep, then--to me--I should do the job in my sleep and spend my waking hours doing what I enjoy. I think in general OP and I have the same goal, but we're approaching on different tacks.

Re: I no longer build software

#838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price is on this one ... https://www.flickr.com/photos/fuller_craft/49837855711/in/al...

It looks great, it looks like it's priced as art and not furniture. Is this a correct interpretation?

Replying to you, and hopefully everybody who commented on your comment:

Oh man, the line between "art" and "craft" is ill-defined. I think of craft as something that has to fulfill a functional need as well as satisfying an aesthetic need, and art as meeting a principally aesthetic need.

Whether you view the cabinet on stand as art or furniture (craft), I suppose depends wholly on what your needs are :-) I built it as a piece of furniture that would suits my aesthetic tastes and also hold some stuff.

The price on it is $5,200 US.

The pricing on anything is a challenge. I have a woodworker friend who is married to a pricing analyst. She works for a sizable multinational corporation, and he feels as in the dark about how to price stuff as I do.

Broadly speaking, pricing for custom work is likely to be at least at the high end of factory made furniture, and by that I mean really nice factory-made stuff. Think like Thomas Moser[0]. Whether you like their look or not, the quality is excellent and as I understand it, there's a lot more hand work that goes into it than is common these days. I'm going to use them in the discussion below, but this applies to any high end commercial maker.

The reasons for this are complicated: On the one hand, my capital costs are (a lot) lower than any factory, I don't maintain showrooms in pricey locations, and I don't have a staff I need to pay.

On the other hand, Moser is buying lumber in quantities that I couldn't store at a price I can only dream of. They have well established lines of furniture that they're set up to make in quantity, or at least know how to build, whereas virtually everything I build is a prototype in some sense.

What you don't see in the final product is the test pieces or the jigs that I built to build it. Project recursion isn't just a software thing, I assure you.

Because it's unlikely that anybody will ever want exactly the same piece, that cost doesn't get spread out over a production run, or even stuck into storage in case somebody wants one in the future. Storage is a cost, and I pay it for stuff I know I'm going to use again and again (a table saw sled, for example). Project specific stuff gets either broken down and reused or put into my wood stove. At best you get the materials back; the time is a sunk cost.

I've talked to other woodworkers about this, and some take the approach of having a line of pieces that they're jigged up to build quickly and efficiently. This is a valid approach to making money at this. Putting some thought into whether it makes sense for me to develop a line at this point is on the list of things on my business planning TODO list.

Even woodworkers who have a catalog of pieces they know how to build have to make choices about how to design and build. Christian Becksvoort has a 15 drawer chest in his catalog[1]. Every tier of drawers is a different height. That means something as simple as cutting parts to rough size involves ripping boards to 20 different widths (for each of the 10 tiers: 3 pieces full height for fronts and sides, and 1 piece reduced height for the drawer back).

And then you have to keep track of those parts. And then you have to dovetail them. I'm willing to bet that Christian Becksvoort would lose money building one 15 drawer chest with a dovetail jig because he'd have 20 different set ups (10 heights, front and back). Could you make it cheaper by making some of the tiers of drawers the same height? Absolutely! Would it retain the charm of his design? For some customers, no.

Before anybody gives up hope on owning anything Christian Becksvoort has ever had a hand in, I'd like to note that he's an author as well as a furniture maker. He's written two books for Lost Art Press[2], and I recommend both.

[0] https://www.thosmoser.com/

[1] https://chbecksvoort.com/cases.html

[2] https://lostartpress.com

Re: I no longer build software

#839
post #731

Holy shit, this is me! A couple things to clarify: I posted the original issue as a minor complaint about the docker cli and promptly forgot about it. I never expected it to get any traction or follow-up. At the time I posted it, I was working as a contractor for my former full time employer. I had left full-time work there in early 2017 to attend the full-time program at the (sadly now-defunct) Furniture Institute o…

Great comment! Two things I noticed a couple years ago: 1. There is a quite expensive furniture maker near where I grew up -- in the more "genteel" area of course. 2. If I still lived there I'd totally shell out three grand for one of their chairs! I've never spent that much on a piece of furniture, but it sure looks like it's worth it: http://ericksonwoodworking.com/furniture/seating/sumi-chair-... Your work is beau…

Thank you for your kind words!

Those are beautiful chairs, and I would agree that the price sure looks worth it. Thank you for bringing them to my attention

For a point of comparison, Kevin Rodel designed the side chairs I built (from plans he published in Fine Woodworking). He lists a price of $1,600 each on his website[0]. I think that's also an entirely fair price for what is a simpler chair to build. Ignoring everything else driving cost in chairs, adding arms alone adds complexity.

The question of listing price is a difficult one. Christopher Scharz of Lost Art Press addressed this an an article he wrote for Core77[1]. He's very established (and rightly so) and chooses not to, but he suggests it might be an advantage for somebody starting out.

One challenge to publishing prices that I perceive is that it fixes a price in a potential customer's mind. I wrote to somebody last week about the question of pricing, and observed that a bookshelf for a child's bedroom is a very different piece from a bookshelf for a lawyer's office. The price varies considerably between the two!

What I (and other people doing principally custom work) can offer is the ability to tailor a project to a budget (within reason) by explaining what drives cost and letting them make choices based upon what they're looking for in a piece.

At this point, I don't want to turn anybody away with a price that's outside their budget, but I'm also mindful of the adage that "if you have to ask, you can't afford it".

[0] https://www.kevinrodel.com/showroom/item/dining-chair

[1] https://www.core77.com/posts/86153/Should-You-Publish-Your-P...

Re: I no longer build software

#840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you!

Seconded! Can you give a ballpark for how much you'd charge for a piece like this? Seems like an insane amount of work at incredible quality. I want to own it.

Replying directly in case you miss it elsewhere.

The price on the piece is $5,200.

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